This Week in the New Normal #78
Our successor to This Week in the Guardian, This Week in the New Normal is our weekly chart of the progress of autocracy, authoritarianism and economic restructuring around the world.
1. Introducing CBDCs is a matter of “urgency”
Talking to the media this week, the head of South Korea’s central bank claimed that the rise of “stablecoins” made the introduction of Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) a matter of urgency.
Coindesk reports:
“This underscores the urgency for central banks to consider introducing central bank digital currencies (CBDC), whether retail or wholesale…Their widespread adoption could diminish the role of central bank money and impair the effectiveness of monetary policies.”
South Korea is already piloting a wholesale scheme and is planning a retail trial early next year.
In related news, Taiwan’s central bank announced they had completed their own wholesale CBDC technical study this week, while the Bank of Japan’s CBDC trial has moved into phase 2, but don’t worry it’s only going to store “minimal user data”.
Meanwhile, hot on the heels of the Bretton Woods Committee report from last month, the Bank of International Settlements published their report on “High-level technical requirements for a functional central bank digital currency (CBDC) architecture”.
2024 gonna be a fun year for CBDC watch.
2. New Variant hits just in time for Christmas
Have you guys heard of JN.1? It’s the new Covid strain – an evolution of “Pirola” – and it’s being “closely monitored” due to its “rapid spread”.
You know, just like all the other ones.
Yahoo News reports:
Scientists are closely monitoring JN.1, which has sparked some concern due to its rapid growth rate and large number of mutations. However, the new variant is closely related to a strain we’ve seen before. It’s a direct offshoot of BA.2.86, aka “Pirola,” which has been spreading in the U.S. since the summer.
Oh, and it has symptoms that include “Sore throat, Congestion, Runny nose, Cough, Fatigue, Headache, Muscle aches, Fever or chills”
You know, just like all the other ones (and the colds everyone has at this time of year every year for all of human history but never mind).
This is barely news and the hallmark of the narrative in hibernation, little updates and developments that do nothing but remind the public that “Covid” is a thing.
To quote Krusty the Klown: “Here’s a headline for ya, nobody cares!”
3. Tyranny Shouldn’t Discriminate
Writing in the Guardian, Sonia Sodha is bemoaning that the UK’s Television License laws “disproportionally impact women”.
According to the article, convictions for license fee evasion make up fully one-third of all female criminal convictions in the UK.
For those of you who are in slightly less dystopian nations, the Television License is a tax you pay in the UK for watching the BBC. Refusal to pay is not considered a civil debt, but a criminal offense. They have posters about it…
Yes, in the UK we are forced, under penalty of law, to pay for our own propaganda.
Yet apparently the only issue Sonia has with this nationwide brainwashing tax is that it’s sexist.
BONUS: Weird scandal of the week
Apparently, a Senate staffer was caught recording himself having sex with an anonymous young man in a conference room in the Capital building. There is a video, which I don’t want to embed, which was somehow obtained by The Daily Caller.
Now, I don’t doubt this stuff goes on – hell, this is tame I’m sure. Consensual sexual activity between consenting adults is hardly a real scandal, no matter how inappropriate the setting.
I just wonder what the point of the story is…maybe there isn’t one.
Oh, the staffer was fired. Obviously.
It’s not all bad…
It’s nearly Christmas, listen to some carols and relax…
*
All told a pretty hectic week for the new normal crowd, and we didn’t even mention the Canadian woman who applied to be euthanized due to “long covid” or Philadelphia’s city council banning ski masks in public places.
There’s a lot of change in the air, a lot of agendas in the works, if you see a headline, article, post or interview you think is a sign of the times, post it in the comments, email us or share it on social media and we will add it to the next edition.
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Never missing the chance to declare climatic armageddon: https://dumptheguardian.com/uk-news/2023/dec/18/chances-of-white-christmas-in-uk-grow-smaller-as-climate-crisis-takes-toll The claim that there were six “White Christmases” in London 1960-2020 is rubbish – I have half a century of memory living in the south of England and can remember at most two. Either nearly all of these were 1960-70 (which might explain why they selected a 60 year period rather than the more natural 50 years) or they have a dubious definition of “White Christmas” (I seem to recall one snowflake on the roof of the Met Office would qualify). Or both. If they go to such lengths to deceive over something so trivial, what are the chances they’re honest about anything else?…. Oh, and we have another film about cannibalism (which they love, predictably): https://dumptheguardian.com/film/2023/dec/19/society-of-the-snow-review-cannibalism-in-the-ice-in-incredible-real-life-survival-tale Yes, this story had a film not that long ago (made by Touchstone – owned by those folks at Disney) but we must have… Read more »
I love the bathos. The media hypnosis machine is trying to scare its target audience to death with tales of collapsing global weather systems. And yet this machine must mould itself to an audience of affluent Westerners hooked on the nostalgic magic of that old Bing Crosby hit relayed atop a whole tradition of Dickensian yuletide bewitchment.
The world is dying …. and, what’s worse, you won’t get your sleigh ride jingle!
Interesting new title for the snow cannibal movie. It was the understated “Alive” in the first outing, thus focusing on an intimate survival drama of a transient nature. But the new one has “Society of the Snow” – as if proposing something a little more permanent!
Licensed to Kill: How the EU$A liquidated Carl Zeiss Jena https://youtu.be/YStGtOpvuyo?si=Ph8lVPPLUCdvsS93 In 1846 Carl Zeiss opened his famous optical works in Jena, East Germany. A century later, 1944, Communist Russia liberated East Germany from the Nazis but preserved the excellent tradition of Carl Zeiss cameras and lenses — only now at a price which ordinary people could afford. But half a century later, with re-unification and absorption of East Germany by the Globalist West, the Jena plant was liquidated and a new, ultra-expensive made-in-Japan outsourced Zeiss brand name was set up. Half a million people in East Germany lost their jobs, and Germany ceded yet another industry to East Asia. This video is a personal lament, by an elderly Englishman who talks disparagingly about “Globalist Western cowboys” mindlessly and ruthlessly shooting up the old Carl Zeiss Jena Optics company — one of the many fine examples of German high culture… Read more »
Nothing screams new normal than mentioning how lucky we are compared to other counties. I feel so lucky.
U.K people..? did you get your pre solstice ritual letter telling you how OFFCON (government) have put the electric and gas’s price up again from January 1st.
“The group who had access to their phones just felt worse the whole time”.
https://technosapiens.substack.com/p/new-study-a-better-way-to-wait-in?r=5fe&%3Butm_campaign=post&%3Butm_medium=email
Funny how they’re suddenly so concerned about the damaging effects of social media – when they’re the ones who constructed it in the first place. Almost as if too many people found too much counter-info about Convid through it…..
The Great Taking (video and book) is quite disturbing:
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/intentional-destruction-first-covid-now-comes-great-taking
Wouldn’t it be something if these were gvt approved fake bars, grounds for some type of foreign action or just how far can the corruption go? From the article: At present, Costco has listed two, 1-ounce gold bars for sale—one from PAMP Suisse Lady Fortuna Veriscan and the other from Gold Bar Rand Refinery. Both items are listed as 24-karat gold available for members only and limited to two bars per member. Costco offers three types of memberships: gold star and business membership costing $60 yearly each, and an executive membership costing $120. The gold bars were listed for sale at $2,069.99 on Friday, according to CNBC. At the time, this was nearly $50 higher than the spot gold price of $2,020.58. Both items are shipped via UPS and delivered within around two to five days to customers across the United States. Once sold, the gold bars cannot be returned or… Read more »
https://rwmalonemd.substack.com/p/well-being-eggs
Devastatngly thorough article on chickens fed on corn, soy & glyphosate– and their eggs. The pathology, obesity & slowed growth of the chicks is especially alarming. Human females are born with all the eggs they will ever have and it seems likely that those eggs are affected by the glyphosate-laced diets of the PARENTS of those newborn little girls.
I know we’ve reservations about the quixotic Mr. Malone but this article quotes and is linked to many studies. It’s first-rate & fully convincing to your resistant friends.
Eggs are one of the few food sources of Vitamin D, the other main one being some types of fish (which no doubt he’d say are full of mercury).
What a concidence that Malone should come out with this just when the northern hemisphere is in midwinter….
Edwige, the truth is the truth. There are good vit D supplements, you know. Btw, krill oil has little to no mercury & is superior to fish oil.
Best you start the evaluation of what you read with a truth check, not an “I know what his motive must be.”
What he’s written in this article is fully backed w studies & he gives you tips w how to select the most nutritious eggs. At least take a glance at an article before descending into mindreading.
Vitamins are as fake as virii.
You’re welcome
And yet … placebo has always been remarkably effective …
Like they once said about the NY Mets, “Ya gotta buh-leave”!
Which perhaps puts the whole institution of medicine and its practitioners and adherents in a different perspective, as well as why they react so aggressively when challenged.
Were masks modern day rosaries? Many would claim they were indeed!
Modern day Hijabs; a sure sign of subjugation to a mindless religious cult. Except that men were forced to veil their faces as well as women.
Not to miss my point, though. Maybe a lot of healing is harnessing ‘placebo’ effect, and creating a belief system in order to amplify this effect is part and parcel of the health industry? Yes, this belief system can jump the shark and test people’s faith, as in Covid times, and if we can understand this process a bit better, and appreciate the belief and faith required to sustain it, perhaps people’s reactions in Covid times will make more sense? Mask mandates (et al) were a BIG upset, betraying common sense too much and attacking people’s faith, yet they were obliged to defend them nonetheless, which was a humiliating task. Their resentment at this was duly vented on ‘anti-vaxxers’, easy scapegoats who were already undermining these necessary placebo-reinforcing beliefs by asking awkward questions and trying to ‘make sense’ and generally missing the point. A2
Yours is an interesting point: the hijab-wearer’s resentment at his/her’s humiliation being vented on the anti-jabbers. Result: that poor Kenyan policeman stoned to death while trying to protect some girls from FGM.
I guess. But you keep linking it to something perceived as oppressive, niche and/or barbaric. I’m not trying to condemn anything in those terms. I’m suggesting the whole concept of organised medicine is more a process of belief than we’ve ever realised. An example might be the recent appearance of terrain theory, which seems less concerned with establishing itself scientifically than it does with making blanket assertions and recruiting ‘believers’.
Perhaps it would help those of us who have been compelled to challenge such belief systems to bear this in mind? Perhaps self awareness is the last thing such belief systems are after?
What exactly the implications of this are, or how it should change anyone’s approach, I don’t honestly know, but I fine it interesting to bear in mind nonetheless! A2
YourPointBeing, you are suffering from flat earth syndrome. Many, many studies verify the effects of many different vitamins. Profound ignorance on both counts.
Debt IS a civil matter not a crime, that IS The Law. In a debt slavery, wage theft & wealth transfer system, if you don’t know your rights you have no rights, in the corporate captured West.
Not just the west China is permanently locked down with their dysfunctional dystopian rules
in ireland you pay the license fee just for having an apparatus even a broken one in the attic, even if you’ve not tv reception at all.
That’s nuts!
That’s nuts but it’s the Law.
“The Law is a Hass!” — Charles Dickens, Mr. Bumble the Beadle.
In Australia, you pay the licence fee indirectly via taxes.
Either way we are all paying for things we do not want nor pay any heed to – wars, BigPharma’s profits, government propaganda, exorbitant wages and perks for government officials, etc.
well yes. what gets me about this is that the fees are supposed to be for the making of programs.
how do ‘they’ know if you have a broken tv set in your attic?
it’s just part of the treat. if you say you have none.
Don’t comply, crash the system.
i tried that for a bit. they got quite nasty, and i was not up to it.
In the Old Normal: Kenya policeman stoned to death for opposing Genital Mutilation. “Female genital mutilation remains illegal in Kenya but is still being practised in some places, but assaults on law enforcement officers are rare. “It is shocking and disheartening that in the 21st century a gang of youths can kill a police officer rescuing girls undergoing the inhumane act,” said Tony Mwebia, founder and executive director of the End FGM Foundation that aims to rally men and boys against FGM and child marriages. Mwebia says men cringe when they are shown videos of the cut, a rite they traditionally believe is undertaken for male benefit. “They are told the cut makes girls sexually mature and women avoid adultery. They are told that they will lose respect within the community by marrying a whole woman. That is why Believers will kill anyone who interferes with the cut,” Mwebia said… Read more »
“Yet apparently the only issue Sonia has with this nationwide brainwashing tax is that it’s sexist.”
That’s the hallmark of bullshit I.e. that they try to pad off the latest pish via some side issue e.g. “The vaccines aren’t going to the poorest!” It’s a manoeuvre that presupposes the bollocks they are trying to sneak past you.
Personally, I donated my shot to the poor. Wish I could have donated it to the rich instead!
In the NEW New Normal. Scott Ritter: “Resolution 377” UN assembly will authorize military forces to terminate Gaza conflict. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PBsiK-s7KDg Then comes the rebuilding of Gaza with BRICS, and and the Palestinian State. In another post, Scott says the Houthis, the Palestinians, the Iraqi, Hezb and Iran are like a cloud of mosquitoes driving Uncle $cam frantic. In the good old days (1950-2010) Uncle $cam would have sent out The Man from Uncle to swat them. But in 2010, with 800 Military bases around the world to man, Uncle began to run out of money and started to hire cheaper proxy armies: NATZO, ISIL, ISIS, Ukies. Cheaper but less cost effective: NATZO was defeated in Afghanistan, ISIL stymied in Iraq, ISIS corralled in Syria, Ukro-nazis on their way out of Ukraine. Even Uncle’s pocket Samson in the ME is having a hard time genociding defenseless women and children with the… Read more »
Is this in baby language?
Not baby language but condensed referential style. Invented names as shorthand for received ideas or well known public personae, like a the simplified caricatures in a cartoon.
Check out this truthstream-media video about the meaning of “Pirola”.:
https://odysee.com/@truthstreammedia:4/did-no-one-bother-to-look-up-this-word-!:9
They’re having a laugh at us….
Footballer.
“No content found”
strange, I can still see the video.
https://odysee.com/@truthstreammedia:4/did-no-one-bother-to-look-up-this-word-!:9
In the NEW New Normal, Alex Mercouris sees Kiev going back to Mother because of NATZO’s abusive relationships in Ukraine:
https://youtu.be/4RmiZk51FV0
Are soldiers already stationed in Great Brittan and the rest of Europe?
https://youtu.be/J2mCRAGb-_o?feature=shared
Yep. 5000 US lead Special Forces in each countries to clean up the filth. Anunnaki too has arrived on Earth.
Yes, that’s what the import of fighting aged males is all about. Its why all the illegal’s hotels etc are under strict security to prevent outsiders finding out what’s going on and explains why 99% of security are also imports unable to string a sentence together in English. We are paying for our own destruction.
Yeah, I got this video yesterday via South and North America, but in a form I couldn’t transfer to the comments section. So I’m glad it’s made it to OffG. comments.
It ticks all the boxes. It looks exactly like the next stage of what we would expect. How to mount a semi-invisible invasion. .It swims , it’s got webbed feet and feathers. It waddles, it quacks.
So we know what it is.
Are they ‘Isis, Islamic State? Or any other Deep State creation?
Directly or indirectly, we all pay for our own propaganda.
When the governments of Australia and Canada announce funding cuts to the public broadcasters they never, never make cuts to the effluent pouring from their ‘news’ rooms.
Funny, that.
An easy solution: Chuck out the TV.
Why the question marks??? Because we have no unions to turn tentative requests into demands. I remember “les trentes annees glorieuse”: the thirty glorious postwar years when Capitalists were frightened by the Spectre of Communism hanging over Europe, and newspapers were terrified of “workers demands”. Unemployment was less than 5% and young couples could afford a house. The Empire Struck Back in the 1980s with Maggie Snatcher and her Gospel of Greed. Maggie had a new religion, as daft as Con-19, so it caught on. The Trickle Up Theory: “It’s not the workers that produce things, it’s the rich people who pay them. Let our money trick up to the rich, and some of it will trickle down to us” So now we have an EU$A with tons of money (most of it loans from the rich) but a shortage of goods. Long hours and high unemployment — especially youth… Read more »
Yes; begging or bargaining with those waging class war as if common ground and mutual self-interest can be found in compromise, or compromised contracts between capital and labor, is a form of denial, something business unionism enjoying the golden age of capital post-WW2 forgot, much to the advantage of the offensive personified by TINA.
Ask Yuval Harari.
There are homeless people living onside those hollow beams supporting those train tracks and highways. Superpower indeed!
Now we need biodegradable fentanyl syringes.
If it weren’t for the monolingual “No Parking” street sign, I would ask you to double-check that this photo wasn’t taken in Gaza. 🤔
The take home “widespread adoption could diminish the role of central bank money and impair the effectiveness of monetary policies”
If this was true it would be the greatest news in the history of modern economics. We just have to adopt a parallel currency/ government and it will impair the regime!
Whooooo!
Depends who owns the nation’s Central Bank. If it is the same tight little cabal of Oligarchs as own the Fed and BoE then no change.
You still want to be governed, then.
Cpncerning paying for being lied to, misled, propagandised, taken for utter idiots:
https://www.rundfunkbeitrag.de/welcome/englisch/index_ger.html#the_licence_fee
Germans pay a sort of poll tax of EUR 18.36 per month at present, per dwelling, whether or not they have a TV, note the phrase below: “regardless of their actual media use”.
“The contribution serves to finance public broadcasting service based on a contributory model. Contributory means that in principle all adult citizens, companies and institutions as well as public interest bodies in Germany should make a contribution – regardless of their actual media use. In this way, everyone can benefit from the variety and quality of the freely available public broadcasting services – even those who pay a reduced licence fee or none at all. The objective is to ensure the highest possible level of fairness in the financing.”
sounds nice. helping the sick and poor.
in ireland they don’t sugar coat it. if you’ve got an apparatus you pay.even without reception.
Same here. Maybe its EU dictated or agreed, or TPB.
likely.
I bet that is because women living alone are more likely to be intimidated by this racket. It is not a good look for the British, that this utterly criminal fucking shite is still going on.
“not a good look for the British”
There cannot be a good lookout for any nation that not only allowed liar and mass murderer to continue as prime minister but let him live long enough to by promoted Director in House of Rothschild — the highest rank ever bestowed on a British Prime Minister.
It’s probably because the goons are most active in the daytime and a disproportionate number of people answering the doorbell are likely to be women, since the drive to get all women out to work has not been wholly successful. Also women are more agreeable than men and, dare I say it, more likely to admit to having an unlicensed telly. The goons especially like council estates where they can expect rich pickings in a small area. One tactic I have seen recently is to video a goon retreating to his car to get the registration number, the idea being that if the car’s not insured for business use you can get him busted. Quite how, I don’t know. For anyone in the dark about the best way to deal with an ‘enforcement officer’ (aka doorstep TV licence salesman): simply don’t to answer the door or, if you do, politely… Read more »
Without reliable statistics on the gender of license evaders its not really possible to tell if the prosecutions for TV license evasion in the UK is biased by gender. It may be nothing more than women watch a lot more TV than men because men have other things to do (play video games on the TVs, for a start).
As for the ‘sex in a conference room’ thing — you do that in just about any company you’ll get fired ‘just because’. I think this incident blew up not because he was caught in the act, as it were, but because he was reviewing the footage on the clock on the Senate floor.